The invention relates to the field of control and display interfaces for remote output peripherals. More particularly, the invention relates to client user and administrative user print server interfaces for remote printing or copying devices.
Separate chooser and print driver applications are typically used by a user at a client computer to control and print a print job at a remote peripheral device, such as a copier or printer. If it is necessary to change destination printers within a network having more than one output device, the client user typically navigates through a chooser application to choose the destination peripheral, exits the chooser application, and then navigates back through an active application in which a desired print job is open.
The user then chooses print options, such as paper size and page orientation, from a page setup menu of the print driver application. The client user then selectively sends all or part of the file to be printed, typically by navigating through a print window of the print driver from within the active application.
A chooser application typically consists of a list of selectable destination printers, whereby each printer has a feature set of printer options and capabilities, such as desired print speed, print quality, available paper sizes, color, stapling and binding options, duplexing, sorting, and printer locality.
However, information regarding the feature sets of connected print servers and output devices is typically accessed through a printer driver on the client computer. For example, a printer driver may have access to toner information from an inkjet printer.
When a user sends a print job to be printed from within an active application, the printer driver appears, wherein the user selectively sets page printing options, such as which pages are to be printed by the destination printer (which was chosen in a separate chooser application). Some printer driver interfaces include information regarding the connected output device, such as toner levels, which can be transferred to the client computer through a two-way computer-printer protocol (e.g., SNMP). When the user activates the print driver application, the print driver queries the selected printer for toner levels, and then displays the toner level information through the printer driver interface.
In the prior art, the user only sees such information when the print driver is activated, typically at the time the user is attempting to send a print job to an output device. As well, such information is only displayed for one output device at a time. For a print driver application, therefore, there is an established connection to a specific printer (which has been pre-specified in a chooser application), and the client user views information regarding the specific printer, and selects options, from within the print driver, before sending the print job to the specified printer.
When a client user invokes the printing process at a client computer, a print driver is typically activated. The printer driver allows the user to select a union of print options from a superset of all available features for the specified printer. Within the print driver or PPD file, there is typically a list of options which the pre-selected printer supports. For example, when a user hits a “Print” command from within a page layout program, such as XPress™, by Quark, Inc., the XPress™ print window displays options, linked the options button within the print window, are specific to the print or PPD file. The user is required to select these print options before sending the file to be printed from within the print selection window.
In some recent print driver systems, when a user sends a file to print from within an active application, the activated print driver application allows the user to select a destination printer from a list of available printers.
An administrative application is typically found at the location of a dedicated print server, which is connected to an output device, such as a copier or printer. The administrative user of a dedicated administrative application is commonly responsible for manual functions at the connected output device, such as loading input paper trays, managing selected print jobs, or modifying print queues for the dedicated print server. For example, as a particular job arrives, having a higher priority than another prior print job that is still in the spool or RIP queue, the administrator can optionally move the higher priority job to the front of the scheduled jobs.
In some basic prior art computer networks, such as Novell™ networks, a network application having a graphic user interface can be used to monitor a computer network. Within some Windows™ operating systems, a network user can selectively view other networked devices, and other information regarding the network. However, within a networked printing environment, information retrieval and control of printing function from either a client computer or an administrative computer is still cumbersome.
In a network that does not use two way communication of information between the connected computers and output devices (e.g., without SNMP protocol), when user goes activates the print driver, The user may select to print from one of a plurality of input trays. However, the print driver is not able to communicate the current tray status of each of the input trays (e.g., the print driver is unable to know, or to display to the user that the chosen input tray is currently filled with blue paper). In such a system, the user has to know, or find out, what paper is physically stocked in each tray.
However, in a network that uses two-way communication of information between the connected computers and output devices (e.g., with SNMP protocol), the printer can be configured to communicate current input tray information (e.g., when a user selects information for an input tray from within a print driver application, the information window may include detailed information regarding the current status of the input tray (e.g., a message stating “The paper in this tray is blue”).
Within some print driver applications, a client user can also check toner levels at a pre-selected output device, before sending a print job (e.g., viewing toner output levels from within a print driver application is possible for some models of Epson printers).
In the prior art, a dedicated administrative workstation is typically connected to a single print server and peripheral device. The dedicated administrative workstation is used to display and control the operation of the single print server and peripheral device, and is typically used to process print jobs from multiple client computers. As well, the administrative user of a prior dedicated administrative print server application is typically required to set an update increment time for each queue (e.g., every 20 seconds). In such a system, the application would request an update queue information every 20 seconds, such as information regarding the spool queue, the RIP queue and the print queue at the dedicated print server. In such an administrative system, if a print job is printed quickly, in less time than the update setpoint, the print job may not even be displayed in a job list within the application.
It would be advantageous to provide a client print server link application, which allows a client user to view information regarding one or more output printing devices, controllably send one or more print jobs to any of the output printing devices, and receive information regarding each of the print jobs. It would also be advantageous to provide an administrative print server application, whereby an administrative user can view and control the status of a print system having one or more client computers and one or more print servers and printing output devices. The development of such a printing system would constitute a major technological advance.